Nick Oldham - Bad Tidings

Henry fished out his warrant card. ‘Detective Superintendent Christie.’

‘Janine Cromer,’ she responded.

Henry squinted at her, maybe seeing some family resemblance. She looked second generation.

‘I’ve come about Freddy. I’m informed he’s gone missing.’

‘We’ve already reported him. A police constable has been up to take details.’

‘I know. I’m just doing some follow-up.’

‘A detective superintendent?’ she questioned, amused.

‘A detective superintendent,’ he confirmed. ‘You going to let me in, or not?’

She surveyed him thoughtfully up and down, her eyes narrowed, weighing him up.

‘Because,’ he continued, ‘I’m not going to stand out here for much longer.’

She unlocked the gate, took hold of each dog by the collar, then turned and manually guided them back towards the house. Henry followed at a respectful distance, knowing he was much slower than he’d been at nineteen, but with his bottom twitching again at the thought of entering the domain of the Cromers. That said, he wasn’t foolish enough to think he would see or find anything of interest inside. He guessed that business and home life were kept separate. It wasn’t as though he would be shown into a room where the cocaine was being diluted with talc and bagged up or where the cannabis was being grown. That would be something that happened elsewhere — though he had no idea exactly where. The Cromers were rumoured to have at least a dozen cannabis farms, but the police had yet to find even one of them.

Janine led the dogs and Henry up to the house, the dogs constantly pulling at her as they looked over their shoulders at Henry, tongues lolling, lots of slavering going on, pointy teeth visible. At the door, she held the dogs to one side and indicated for Henry to go into the house ahead of her. He gave them a wide berth and stepped inside, into a wide hallway. A moment later she was with him, having left the dogs outside.

‘Nice dogs,’ he commented.

‘Through here.’ She pointed up the hallway to a door on the left which led into a large kitchen. Henry passed another door on his left, from behind which he heard raised male voices.

He went into the kitchen, which was expansive and expensive-looking. There was a double-sized range cooker and a large island unit in the centre of the room on which were the remnants of a buffet. A few plates with sandwiches, bowls of crisps, breadsticks and dips and a wide array of bottles, wine, beer and spirits. Looked like a family Christmas get-together, Henry thought, and maybe the family was in the other room he’d walked past — at least the male members, because here in the kitchen were four ladies. One looked old and wrinkled, two were perhaps mid forties and the fourth in her twenties. All sat at the table, each with a glass of wine in hand.

Their eyes spun to him, this interloper. He flashed a thought: crims’ wives, crims’ mums — crimwags — then forced a thin smile and said, ‘Merry Christmas, ladies.’

Not one of them looked either happy to see him, or happy in themselves. Their faces were all deadly serious, as Henry had seen in the moment before they had turned to him. Each had anger and concern across their faces, but that didn’t stop them from regarding him like prey.

‘This is Detective Superintendent Christie,’ Janine announced. ‘He’s come about Freddy’ — and the tone of her voice meant that she didn’t need to add, ‘If you believe that!’

One said, ‘Well fuck-a-doodle. Just what we need — a cop. Shall we gobble him up?’

Henry’s forced smile remained fixed as he quickly tried to work out who was who. The oldest woman was easiest — Granny Cromer, clan matriarch, all-round vicious cow. He knew her face because he’d seen the mug shots a few times, but not recently. She had a long history of violence and debauchery. Knocking seventy, her hell-raising days were over, but only just. This, Henry thought, was Freddy’s mother.

The other women were not so easy to pinpoint. One had a Cromer look about her: angular, dark eyed, pretty in an austere sort of way. Henry thought she could be Lizzie — who had once been convicted of attacking another woman with an axe and was known as Lizzie the Blade — but he was not certain. She looked like Granny, maybe was her daughter, maybe Janine’s mum. He would have to look at the family tree on his next visit to the Major Crime Unit. The others didn’t have any family resemblance and Henry could not place them. Maybe they were friends of the family.

So he thought Janine could be Lizzie’s daughter. Janine certainly had a similarity, but now that Henry saw her in proper light, she had a softer edge to her features.

‘So why’ve you turned up?’ Granny Cromer asked, interrupting his recollections. She was smoking and blew out a lungful as she spoke, her voice rasping like sandpaper. ‘Snoopin’? ’Cos this isn’t a job for a detective superintendent. My son’s gone missing and I’m worried about him because he hasn’t taken his freakin’ psycho tablets with him. That’s all.’ She scowled like a witch.

‘Professional service,’ Henry said.

‘Have we ever had anything to do with you?’ she asked, peering suspiciously at him. ‘Personally, like?’

‘Yes, you have,’ Henry said, and caught the look of realization on Granny’s face.

‘You’re the bastard who put Jimmy away!’ she accused him.

‘It doesn’t matter what my past involvement with you was,’ Henry said equably, aware that he had entered a nest of vipers. ‘I’m here to help now, that’s all.’ He opened his hands in a gesture designed to say that he was here to offer peace, not war. All he was short of were the butterflies.

Granny’s old head shook and her thin corrugated lips sneered at him. ‘Yeah, fucking right.’

‘So who can I talk to?’ Henry asked. ‘I mean, you’re clearly concerned about Freddy. .’

‘No we’re not!’

Henry rotated slowly at the voice and looked at the man now framed in the kitchen door.

Terry Cromer, undisputed head of the Cromer family.

‘We’re un-reporting him,’ he said firmly. ‘Thanks for your concern but we don’t need any police involvement. We’ll find him ourselves.’

‘Can I have a word?’ Henry said, knowing who he was speaking to and aware that, not two years ago, Henry had put his son away for life on a murder charge.

Henry Christie had been a member of Lancashire Constabulary for over thirty years and he had known about the Cromer family and their activities for most of those years.

Henry’s first posting had been as a PC to Blackburn and, at nineteen, he’d had plenty of run-ins with the wild, out of control Cromer family. They had various homes throughout the east of the county and although the core of the family came from Belthorn, some were based on the Shadsworth council estate in Blackburn, an area they ruled with intimidation and havoc, continually at war with other families and criminal factions. Henry had come face to face with a few of the younger Cromers, usually for minor offences and public order incidents.

As they had matured, their activities became more subtle and old father Cromer — Granny’s husband — took a grip of the family and realized the potential of drug dealing, especially as he could call on some of the more dumb, but violent members of the family to act as enforcers. He harnessed one of his two sons and they moved into the nightclubs of Blackburn and other towns, taking control of the doors — and therefore the drugs trade — and eventually some of the clubs themselves.

The business expanded quickly, but even old man Cromer could not stop the onset of cancer, which killed him as ruthlessly as any bullet, leaving the son — Terry — in charge of the business.